Recent progress in artificial intelligence has renewed interest in building systems that learn and think like people. Many advances have come from using deep neural networks trained end-to-end in tasks such as object recognition, video games, and board games, achieving performance that equals or even beats that of humans in some respects. Despite their biological inspiration and performance achievements, these systems differ from human intelligence in crucial ways. We review progress in cognitive science suggesting that truly human-like learning and thinking (...) machines will have to reach beyond current engineering trends in both what they learn and how they learn it. Specifically, we argue that these machines should build causal models of the world that support explanation and understanding, rather than merely solving pattern recognition problems; ground learning in intuitive theories of physics and psychology to support and enrich the knowledge that is learned; and harness compositionality and learning-to-learn to rapidly acquire and generalize knowledge to new tasks and situations. We suggest concrete challenges and promising routes toward these goals that can combine the strengths of recent neural network advances with more structured cognitive models. (shrink)

Does physics describe anything that can meaningfully be called “independent reality,” or is it merely operational? Most physicists implicitly favor an intermediate standpoint, which takes quantum physics into account, but which nevertheless strongly holds fast to quite strictly realistic ideas about apparently “obvious facts” concerning the macro-objects. Part 1 of this article, which is a survey of recent measurement theories, shows that, when made explicit, the standpoint in question cannot be upheld. Part 2 brings forward a proposal for making minimal (...) changes to this standpoint in such a way as to remove such objections. The “empirical reality” thus constructed is a notion that, to some extent,does ultimately refer to the human means of apprehension and of data processing. It nevertheless cannot be said that it reduces to a mere name just labelling a “set of recipes that never fail.” It is shown that our usual notion of macroscopic causality must be endowed with similar features. (shrink)

A brief statement of medieval linguistic analysis as found chiefly in the works of Thomas Aquinas. A thin survey of contemporary analysis is offered in order to contrast the purported acceptance of analysis as the end of philosophy with Thomas' use of analysis as method. Unfortunately, most of the constructive work in language analysis during the past ten years is not considered. The brevity of the text precludes persuasive treatment; yet the book succeeds in its expressed purpose of sketching some (...) chief differences between the medieval and contemporary approaches in the hope that the confrontation of these currents will bring to the fore the analytic work of Aquinas himself.--D. P. B. (shrink)

Learning to understand a single causal system can be an achievement, but humans must learn about multiple causal systems over the course of a lifetime. We present a hierarchical Bayesian framework that helps to explain how learning about several causal systems can accelerate learning about systems that are subsequently encountered. Given experience with a set of objects, our framework learns a causal model for each object and a causal schema that captures commonalities among these causal models. The schema organizes the (...) objects into categories and specifies the causal powers and characteristic features of these categories and the characteristic causal interactions between categories. A schema of this kind allows causal models for subsequent objects to be rapidly learned, and we explore this accelerated learning in four experiments. Our results confirm that humans learn rapidly about the causal powers of novel objects, and we show that our framework accounts better for our data than alternative models of causal learning. (shrink)

Childhood obesity has become a public health epidemic, and currently a battle exists over how to frame and address this problem. This paper explores how public policy approaches can be employed to address obesity. We present the argument that obesity should be viewed as the consequence of a “toxic environment” rather than the result of the population failing to take enough “personal responsibility.” In order to make progress in decreasing the prevalence of obesity, we must shift our view of obesity (...) away from the medical model to a public health model . At the same time, we must be sensitive to the problem of weight bias.Potential obstacles to taking a public policy approach are identified, as well as suggestions on how to overcome them. (shrink)

The authors use the term “principlism” to refer to the practice of using “principles” to replace both moral theory and particular moral rules and ideals in dealing with the moral problems that arise in medical practice. The authors argue that these “principles” do not function as claimed, and that their use is misleading both practically and theoretically. The “principles” are in fact not guides to action, but rather they are merely names for a collection of sometimes superficially related matters for (...) consideration when dealing with a moral problem. The “principles” lack any systematic relationship to each other, and they often conflict with each other. These conflicts are unresolvable, since there is no unified moral theory from which they are all derived. For comparison the authors sketch the advantages of using a unified moral theory. (shrink)

With regard to the notion of cause—or more generally of influence—the various methods of proof of Bell's theorem do not all have the same bearing. The differences between two of these methods are analyzed, with regard to both their conceptual basis and their conclusions. It is shown that both methods give valuable information but, not too surprisingly, the one that is based on the more detailed and specific definition of the concept of influences, and that makes use of the concept (...) of attribute, leads to conclusions that are also to some extent more specific than those following from the other method. (shrink)

The progression of research and scholarly inquiry does not occur in isolation and is wholly dependent on accurate reporting of methods and results, and successful replication of prior work. Without mechanisms to correct the literature, much time and money is wasted on research based on a crumbling foundation. These guidelines serve to outline the respective responsibilities of researchers, institutions, agencies, and publishers or editors in maintaining the integrity of the research record. Delineating these complementary roles and proposing solutions for common (...) barriers provide a foundation for best practices. (shrink)

Neil offers a comprehensive but highly readable account of the world expansion and missionary efforts of Christianity—in its Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox varieties. What emerges rather clearly is the close connection between post-Renaissance European political expansion and Christian missionary activities: the former appears to have been the condition of the latter with a rather detrimental tendency to over-identify a paternalistic Western culture with Christian religious belief and practice. Neil writes with equanimity but points out that present ecumenical thinking was foreign (...) to 19th century Roman Catholic missionaries. This is the sixth volume of The Pelican History of the Church and a worthy member of a distinguished series.—D. J. B. (shrink)

For anyone intrigued by the possibility of the so-called "psi phenomena", this is a rather interesting, even entertaining book to ponder. Kahn describes an entire gamut of unusual or weird happenings and gives the biographies of a number of persons supposedly possessing occult powers. Philosophers would probably be more cautious in their interpretations than Kahn who has a tendency to claim that every important thinker has had a vital fascination with psi phenomena.—D. J. B.

Essays by E. B. Allaire, May Brodbeck, Reinhart Grossmann, Herbert Hochberg and Robert G. Turnbull, most of which have already appeared since 1959. Half of the essays argue answers of a realist type to contemporary statements of traditional ontological problems. The second half of the volume studies the ontological "systems" of Ockhom, Berkeley, Frege, Moore, Wittgenstein, Quine and Dewey from a realistic standpoint. Three previously unpublished essays are included: "Particulars and Time", "Common Names", and "The 'Tractatus': Nominalistic or Realistic?". An (...) excellent beginning for a promising series.--D. P. B. (shrink)

An introductory text which deals with several of the basic problems of semantical and logical analysis. Most of the discussion is devoted to problems of usage, rules, inference, and validity. A rather cumbersome symbolism results from the author's explicit attempt to treat these problems with the formal tools of elementary symbolic logic.--D. P. B.

Van Til attempts to slay the beast of liberal Protestantism as it rears its ugly head in the writings of three American professors of theology. Van Til's position, though a minority one, is important enough but somehow his major arguments suffer from a certain lack of penetration into the issues.—D. J. B.

A prosaic and unimaginative introductory textbook. The author claims that his aim is "not to introduce the student to the various philosophies but to introduce him to the kind of thinking from which philosophy comes." The very patness of his presentation, however, discourages original philosophical thinking.--D. P. B.

A new and idiomatic translation of the most important questions in the Summa Theologica pertaining to the nature of the human soul and human knowledge.--D. P. B.

This beautifully definitive edition of More's Utopia, the fourth volume in the Yale Edition of the complete works, appears on the four hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the original composition. The latin text used is the one of March 1518 ; but included is a complete list of variant readings from the 1516, 1517, and November 1518 editions. Using a lucid revision of G. C. Richards' translation, Hexter and Surtz provide a wealth of helpful details about the textual, linguistic, historical, (...) and cultural character of Utopia as well as a discussion of it as a work of literary art. The text is followed by a number of interesting illustrations and a lengthy, analytical commentary. More's work gave rise to a host of similar descriptions of imaginary lands but it is Utopia which is still commonly read today. Its relatively down-to-earth quality gives Utopia a certain modern appeal, and needless to say, it is an important work for anyone interested in the ordering of human society.—D. J. B. (shrink)

The idea is discussed according to which, in the Heisenberg picture, the operators correspond to the dynamic properties while the density matrix corresponds to our knowledge. A simple, soluble model is made use of in order to determine in what way this idea needs to be refined and what it then tells us about the relationship of reality and physics.

The 2015 Varsity Medical Ethics debate convened upon the motion: “This house believes nootropic drugs should be available under prescription”. This annual debate between students from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, now in its seventh year, provided the starting point for arguments on the subject. The present article brings together and extends many of the arguments put forward during the debate. We explore the current usage of nootropic drugs, their safety and whether it would be beneficial to individuals and (...) society as a whole for them to be available under prescription. The Varsity Medical Debate was first held in 2008 with the aim of allowing students to engage in discussion about ethics and policy within healthcare. The event is held annually and it is hoped that this will allow future leaders to voice a perspective on the arguments behind topics that will feature heavily in future healthcare and science policy. This year the Oxford University Medical Society at the Oxford Union hosted the debate. (shrink)

This study analyzes 435 oocyte donor recruitment advertisements to assess whether entities recruiting donors of oocytes to be used for in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedures include a disclosure of risks associated with the donation process in their advertisements. Such disclosure is required by the self-regulatory guidelines of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) and by law in California for advertisements placed in the state. We find very low rates of risk disclosure across entity types and regulatory regimes, although risk (...) disclosure is more common in advertisements placed by entities subject to ASRM's self-regulatory guidelines. Advertisements placed in California are more likely to include risk disclosure, but disclosure rates are still quite low. California-based entities advertising outside the state are more likely to include risk disclosure than non-California entities, suggesting that California's law may have a modest “halo effect.” Our results suggest that there is a significant ethical and policy problem with the status quo in light of the known and unknown risks of oocyte donation and the importance of risk disclosure to informed consent in the context of oocyte donation. (shrink)

In these lectures, given at Göttingen in 1904-1910, Husserl describes the phenomenological content of lived experiences of time, Zeiterlebnisse, and defines the differences between acts of consciousness. He carefully shows how inner time is constituted as a continuum through the retentional modifications of consciousness. Consciousness is not merely temporal; it is temporality and the basis for the constitution of objective time. The translation is crystal-clear, though this makes the doctrine no less difficult. This early work shows that Husserl practiced phenomenology (...) before he formulated its methodological principles in the Ideen.—A. B. D. (shrink)

We approach the relationship between classical and quantum theories in a new way, which allows both to be expressed in the same mathematical language, in terms of a matrix algebra in a phase space. This makes clear not only the similarities of the two theories, but also certain essential differences, and lays a foundation for understanding their relationship. We use the Wigner-Moyal transformation as a change of representation in phase space, and we avoid the problem of “negative probabilities” by regarding (...) the solutions of our equations as constants of the motion, rather than as statistical weight factors. We show a close relationship of our work to that of Prigogine and his group. We bring in a new nonnegative probability function, and we propose extensions of the theory to cover thermodynamic processes involving entropy changes, as well as the usual reversible processes. (shrink)

THE LEFT AND RIGHTS: A CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS OF SOCIALIST RIGHTS by Tom Campbell Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983. 296 pp., $12.95 Campbell's attempt to construct a socialist version of rights and the rule of law fails because it does not draw on individualism. Campbell's positive rights are ineffective barrien to both the schemes of Utopian visionaries who command political authority and more mundane sources of the abuse of power. He leaves unanswered the question of who will determine the extent (...) of the ?needs?; that would constitute socialist rights, in the absence of unlimited resources to fulfill them. And his rejection of individualism ¡eaves him no means of adjudicating among conflicting positive claim?rights. (shrink)

Le cannabis est envisagé ici comme un instrument de la politique d’aménagement des territoires, au sens où R. Neuburger évoque les territoires de l’intime. Ceci permet la création de nouvelles narrations qui permettent de sortir de l’impasse où le cannabis est le problème pour les parents alors que c’est la solution pour le jeune. Deux vignettes cliniques illustrent cette métaphore et les opportunités qu’elle offre pour la thérapie.

Discourse about knowledge-based economies rarely moves beyond the commercialization of science and engineering, and is locked in the discursive limits of functionalism. We argue that these discourses limit the scope of what knowledge-based economies might achieve because they are uninformed by an adequate conception of knowledge. In particular, knowledge management and knowledge-based economy discourse has not included the axiological dimension of knowledge that leads to wisdom. Taking an axiological perspective, we can discuss policy frameworks aimed at producing the social structures (...) needed to bring fully formed and fully functioning knowledge societies into being. We argue that while the dominant discourse of industrial modernity remains rationalist, functionalist, utilitarian and technocratic, knowledge-based economies will resemble a savant rather than a sage. A wisdom-based renaissance of humanistic epistemology is needed to avoid increasing social dysfunction and a lack of wisdom in complex technological societies. (shrink)

Weber-Fechner Law states that the perceived intensity is proportional to the logarithm of the stimulus. Recent experiments suggest that this law also holds true for perception of numerosity. Therefore, the use of a logarithmic scale for the quantification of the perceived intensity may also depend on how the cognitive apparatus processes information. If Weber-Fechner law is the result of natural selection, then the logarithmic scale should be better, in some sense, than other biologically feasible scales. We consider the minimization of (...) the relative error as the target of natural selection and we provide a formal proof that the logarithmic scale minimizes the maximal relative error. (shrink)